Umphrey’s McGee: Mixed up and loving it

Chad Berndtson

Friday

Jul 30, 2010 at 12:01 AM

It is a hilarious understatement to suggest that the wily lads in Umphrey’s McGee like to mix things up. The Chicago jamband, which has one of the scene’s most cultishly devoted fan followings, has a reputation for shows that twist wildly, turn on a dime, and even in as short a passage as two or three songs, explore acid-jazz, prog rock, gnarly blues, rippling funk and even classical, most of the time without losing musical coherence or devolving into a clinic.

It is a hilarious understatement to suggest that the wily lads in Umphrey’s McGee like to mix things up. The Chicago jamband, which has one of the scene’s most cultishly devoted fan followings, has a reputation for shows that twist wildly, turn on a dime, and even in as short a passage as two or three songs, explore acid-jazz, prog rock, gnarly blues, rippling funk and even classical, most of the time without losing musical coherence or devolving into a clinic.

It’s one reason the fans keep coming back: The band likes dangerous curves as much as its audience, and has stayed on an almost obsessive quest to set the bar continuously higher. In a scene where unpredictability and improvisation are a reason for being, they out-do almost all their peers, for better and sometimes – as happens with any form of experimental music – for worse.

“A lot of even the best bands have suffered from playing the same set every night. They get burned out on the music, and then the ideology,” said Umphrey’s guitarist Jake Cinninger. “If we’re not interested it what we’re doing, that’s bad. We don’t want to project that way, and we want to keep our brains active. That’s always the way we do it.”

For Umphrey’s, “mixing it up” means everything. It has a well-stocked cellar of original songs, but is nearly as often given to new arrangements of those songs, mash-up jams, cover songs, Halloween and New Year’s Eve theme nights, instrument switching, and guest musicians as varied as jazzmen Joshua Redman and Stanley Jordan and blues legends Buddy Guy and the late Koko Taylor.

More recently, it’s also broadened its palette to include full-blown concept shows. Last year, Umphrey’s hosted a few “S2” events, where fans “conduct” the band by sending ideas to them via text message. In April, they did a show called the “UMBowl,” in which the band presented four “quarters” (each a set) of music that included all-acoustic passages, jamming on themes developed by the band using the S2 model, all-request electric segments, and a “choose your own adventure” set in which fans were polled in real-time on song and jam choices.

“It’s all about reacting to a phrase or a suggestion someone throws up there,” Cinninger said, describing one method to the S2 and UMBowl events. “For example, say someone throws up the phrase ‘[Metallica singer] James Hetfield versus Bob Marley.’ The first thing that would come to my mind would be to play heavy, heavy reggae and sing sweet lyrics in James Hetfield’s vocal style.”

That level of free association and improvisation isn’t without its downside, of course. Umphrey’s can be an alienating band, as well, and Cinninger willingly admits that occasional flubs and loose ends are part of the deal.

“Whatever gets us out of our comfort zone,” Cinninger said. “That’s the only way to see if it works. Our thought is that you’re getting your money’s worth seeing us sweat up there.”

It’s been a year and a half since “Mantis,” the band’s most recent and best-received studio album. According to Cinninger, the band recently hashed out six new songs at his studio in Southern Michigan, but rather than an album of new material, is considering several EPs focused on various moods and textures.

“I’m a fan of continuity within an album, and this doesn’t sound well together, but it does in pieces,” he said. “Maybe we do a nightclub and pop-style EP, maybe we do a metal EP, and then maybe we do some kind of classic Umphrey’s EP. It all makes sense to us.”

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